In sci-fi films such as ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Re-Animator’, human bodies are brought back to life, existing in a freakish condition between life and death.
While this sounds like the stuff of fantasy, a new study says a ‘third state’ of existence really does exist in modern biology.
According to the researchers, the third state is where the cells of a dead organism continue to function after the organism’s death.
Amazingly, after the organism’s demise, its cells are gaining new capabilities that they did not possess in life, the biologists say.
If more experiments with the cells from dead animals – including humans – show they can enter the third state, they could ‘redefine legal death’.
The new study in Physiology has been led by Professor Peter Noble at the University of Washington in Seattle and Alex Pozhitkov at City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte California.
‘Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites,’ they say in a new piece for The Conversation.
‘But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a ‘third state’ that lies beyond the traditional boundaries of life and death.
‘Certain cells – when provided with nutrients, oxygen, bioelectricity or biochemical cues – have the capacity to transform into multicellular organisms with new functions after death.
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